Two
The Goose Approach
to Research
Participation: The
Communitv Side
HAVE YOU EVER FELT
LIKE AN INTERLOPER?
Have you ever felt like an interloper?
I have.
When I was a graduate student, I decided to write a paper
about the neighborhood I was living in at the time. It was a pretty
28 RESEARCH METHODS FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE
fascinating place-an old, run-down area of small, single-family
homes with an enormous 10-building high-rise development in its
midst. Even more interesting was that a number of the old homes
were undergoing renovation. I wanted to know why. So I gathered
my courage and called the neighborhood organization office-making
that first approach to schedule a research interview has always been
hard for me. I arrived at the office for the interview and met Tim
Mungavan, one of the neighborhood leaders and the community
organizer/architect for the neighborhood redevelopment project.
He looked a lot like me-blue jeans, ponytail, and wire-rimmed
glasses. But there the resemblance ended. Before I could get a word
out, he confronted me:
We have students and reporters coming through all the time, asking
neighborhood people to give their time and answer their questions.
And we don't get so much as a copy of a paper from them. If I agree to
talk with you, then I want you to agree that you'll give us a copy of the
paper you write.'
Well, that did it. My first impulse was to run from the room,
pack my bags, quit school, and find a nice, safe job sorting boxes
somewhere. Thankfully, instead, I meekly promised to drop off a
copy of the paper when it was done. Tim's words haunted me. Why
was he so distrustful of researchers? Was I really just like them and
couldn't be trusted either? Well, I thought about it and decided I
didn't want to be lumped in with all those other researchers who
had taken information from the neighborhood without any accountability. I was going to be the exception.
So I returned a few days later and told Tim I wanted to contribute more than just a copy of a paper. I wanted to make sure that
I gave something back to the neighborhood in return for the time
neighborhood activists gave for my interviews. Well, Tim got this
gleam in his eye and pointed to a door in the corner of the office. It
led to a short hallway and an outside exit. It seems the city fire
marshal was concerned because it had also become a storeroom
and was so cluttered that it was almost impossible to get to the outside door. Tim suggested I tidy it up. So there I was, a highly
trained graduate student (well, at least that is what I thought)
being asked to do menial labor. But I was intimidated enough to
agree to it. The short and narrow hallway, barely six feet long, was
filled with cardboard file boxes-the kind people use when
they can't afford real filing cabinets-strewn helter-skelter about
the hallway. Well, the first box I opened was filled with old
The Goose Approach to Research 29
neighborhood newspapers. By the time I finished sorting those
boxes and clearing a path to the exit, I had all my research data
organized exactly the way I wanted it, and I have been doing
research projects with the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in
Minneapolis now for almost two decades.
The way I do that research, however, is very different from what
I imagined when I first met Tim Mungavan. I didn't have a name for
it then and, in fact, didn't have a label for it for a number of years
after that. All I knew is that it felt better. I felt as though I was giving rather than just taking. And I no longer felt like an outsider, an
interloper. If you just finished the first chapter, you remember the
goose story. And that is what it felt like. I was part of the flock. My
research became part of the neighborhood's reflection process, and
even its planning process. As the neighborhood researcher, I could
sometimes fly in the point position when the neighborhood most
needed information and then fall back when other skills were
needed. At other times, my research was "honking from behind,"
encouraging the neighborhood by reminding them of their victories
in restoring the community. And when my neighborhood activist
friends, so much in the thick of battles with city hall to get the funds
and the freedom to rebuild their housing, occasionally fell out of formation with frustration and disillusionment, I could reflect with
them on the history of all they had accomplished and help them
develop new strategies to go back into battle.
This process of doing research with people, rather than on
them, is the Goose Approach to research. For those of you who are
students or professors, and often feel like interlopers when you do
research, or avoid research altogether because of that feeling, the
Goose Approach can help you feel as though you have something
to contribute. In addition, because it involves the people being
researched in the research process itself, it can help assure that the
research makes a real contribution to the group, organization, or
community. For those of you in community settings already who
have only had research imposed on you, the Goose Approachor, as it is more commonly known, the participatory approachoffers a way for you to take control of the research to serve your
community.
This chapter will explore how to maximize participation in a
research project. You will likely notice that, in doing so, I will describe
the researcher as an outsider to the community or group. That is
not always the case, but even a researcher who is a respected community member may face many of the same challenges of getting
people involved in the research itself.
30 RESEARCH METHODS FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE
PARTlClPATORY APPROACHES TO RESEARCH
Of course, as you've probably already guessed, this style of research is
not really called the Goose Approach. Participatory approaches to
research are called a variety of different things in different places: action
research, participatory research, parResearch: Common Elements
ticipatory action research, collaborative research, community-based
Focuses on being useful
research, community-based particiEmploys diverse methods
patory research, and popular eduEmphasizes collaboration
cation. There are some important
differences among these approaches,
as we will see. But first let's explore what they have in common and
how people doing research can use the general approach.
1. Focuses on Being Useful
One of the reasons participatory approaches work so well for
people doing research in community settings is that they are
designed to be useful. For those already working in community contexts who do their own research to help their projects succeed, this
seems almost too obvious. The kinds of research we will learn about
in this book-assessing needs, mapping resources, evaluating programs, and others-are by definition designed to be useful. Those of
us in higher education, however, often need retraining to make our
research useful.
But, really, what is the difference between research that is useful
and research that is not? Isn't it possible that any research can be
made useful by someone applying its findings? That is possible, but
it requires making a leap from the context in which the research was
originally done to the context where you want to apply the findings.
This is particularly a problem with basic research that uses crosssectional data, such as a survey, where you are collecting data from
across a population rather than from just a few individuals. The danger is that you attempt to predict the course of events in any single
situation based on research done on a broad cross section of situations, and your specific situation may be outside the typical range
that cross-sectional research concentrates on. As we discussed in the
first chapter, the probability that extensive research applies to any
particular situation is difficult to know, and therefore such research is
The Goose Approach to Research 31
risky to rely on. Can statistical research on the quality of health care
across urban communities'in the United States apply, for example, to
a working-class African-American community in Portland, Oregon?
There is a lot that can go wrong between doing research on the general population and applying that research in a particular place with
a particular group of people whose uniqueness might make general
findings irrelevant.
The alternative is to custom-design a research project in the particular setting where it will be used. Maria Eugenia Sanchez and
Eduardo Almeida2 describe a two-decade research process with an
indigenous community in Mexico called the Nahuat. For the first
three years, the research team mostly got acquainted with the community, doing a few surveys and some field research to increase
their own understanding of this unique culture. The women on the
research team worked in the vegetable gardens alongside community women, and the men participated in outside economic craft and
agricultural production. A number of them learned the Nahuat
language. In this case, the researchers made themselves useful to
the community before they tried to make the research useful.
Eventually, they conducted legal research to help community
members confront human rights abuses, and transportation research
to get paved roads in the area. But the research and planning that
went into these projects began from Nahuat cultural values and was
guided by community members.
2. Employs Diverse Methods
In order to be useful, participatory approaches to research need
to use methods that make sense to people. Most of us were trained
to tlunk about how well the research methods fit the research questions. A research question focused on understanding the opinions of
the population in general, for example, implied a survey method,
while a research question about the cultural characteristicsof a small
community implied field research.
Those standards still apply here. But there is an additional standard for determining which research methods to use-what methods
will create research that will actually be used. Some of the comrnunities I work with rely much more on talk than on writing, and one of
my most embarrassing research moments came when I was working
to write the history of a community organization in Toledo. We
designed a project to recover the history of this once rowdy and confrontational community group on the east side of the city, in hopes of
32 RESEARCH METHODS FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE
finding out why it succeeded for as long as it did and then why it
folded. I ended up reading a lot of old newspapers and letters, but
the most interesting part of the work was the interviews I conducted
with neighborhood residents.
One method I use in such situations is to ask the people I interview to read and react to drafts of what I write. Validity-whether
you are measuring what you think you are measuring-is one of
the important issues in research. Returning interview transcripts to
interviewees provides a validity check. I can find out whether I
heard correctly and in the correct context. In addition, returning
transcripts serves an educational purpose, engaging the people I
interviewed in reflecting upon what they told me. This often works
very effectively, both for correcting my mistakes and giving me new
information as the people I interviewed begin to really understand
what the research is about and then offer me even more information.
In this particular case, however, I did not realize that some of the
community people were illiterate. Sending them their interview
quotes to review, followed by a 25-page draft, and then calling them
for their reactions, placed those residents in terribly uncomfortable
positions. I only found out about this gaffe indirectly through
another resident, who quietly explained why her neighbor wasn't
giving any corrections.
I learned through this experience that the written word is not
the final word in research methods. In fact, some of the most interesting forms of research involve community theater and community
art. Mark Lynd's3 popular theater work, described in Chapter 1, is
an example of project-based research that doesn't involve any
writing. This project was designed for a group of adults with developmental disabilities to interview friends, family, and service
providers and then use that interview data to create a play about
living with developmental disabilities. The members of his group
initially found the interview methods to be very difficult, especially
when they interviewed experts on development disabilities, who
often answered in jargon they could not understand. But, most
important, they had decided to videotape the interviews. So they all
sat down together to watch the videotapes and began to deconstruct
the jargon. In doing so, they were able to compare the abstract
language of the experts to their own stories. Then, rather than trying
to write a report expressing the findings, they used the method of
community theater. The play that resulted from this process allowed
the cast members to present their experience in a creative form,
informed by their new understanding of how others viewed them
and their disabilities.
The Goose Approach to Research 33
3. Emphasizes Collaboration
One of the best ways to make sure that the research will be
useful, and that the research methods will fit the culture of the group
or community, is for the people affected by the research to guide it.
Knowing from the beginning that the people you are working with
are not turned on by the written word can save a lot of headaches
and embarrassment. And the best way to find out what kind of
research methods will fit the community and product: the most
useful outcomes is to ask.
Asking can be challenging, however. The researcher needs to
spend some time getting to know the group or community. In many
models of participatory research practiced in underdeveloped communities, this is called pre-re~earch.~
The researcher spends time
learning what the power relations are in the setting-who the
leaders are, what the power factions are, what issues are important
to people. Because it is often impractical for the researcher to collaborate with everyone in the community or the organization, the
researcher needs to know who is generally held in high esteem.
Sometimes this is easy. In most of the research projects I do, I am
invited in by some leader in the community or the program and am
thus already associated with some group or individual. After just a
few conversations with other people, I can fairly quickly determine
whether my association with the inviter will help or hinder the
work.
For the researcher entering the community without an invitation, establishing their own legitimacy can be more difficult.
Recently I was involved in a project with neighborhood organizations in Melbourne, Australia. The goal was to conduct research
assessing the information and technology needs of those organizations. The project had been developed between a local university
and some of the organizations. But I was entering the situation cold,
after a long 30 hours of cars, airports, and airlines to get there, and
had no legitimacy in the eyes of these organization staff. The first
few days were difficult. We couldn't get the neighborhood organization staff to commit to the meetings that had been set up before I
arrived. So the first week there we spent a lot of time going out to
the neighborhoods to meet people on their turf, on their schedule.
By the end, we had begun to build up some interest and involvement from the organizations and are now looking forward to a
"launch event" a few months down the road, where the organizations will take the lead in using the research to publicize their needs
and then lobby for resources to fill those needs.
The Goose Approach to Research 35
34 RESEARCH METHODS FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE
As with my early experience with the Cedar-Riversidecommunity,
described at the beginning of this chapter, "researchers" are increasingly distrusted out there as simply exploiting poor communities
or disrupting organizations for their own professional advancement. Some community organizations now even require outside
researchers to sign a contract stating what they will give to the community. A few years ago I became acquainted with the Corella and
Bertram F. Bonner Foundation, which was sponsoring a project to
create campus-based centers to support participatory forms of
research. They were looking for someone to research the effectiveness of their efforts. It sounded like a fascinating project-doing
participatory research to help participatory research.
Bobby Hackett, the Foundation vice-president, gave me his e-mail
list to introduce the project to the faculty contacts on each of the campuses they were working with. I tried putting on my best participatory face and doing my pre-research through this e-mail list, but
without much response. So I took the risk of approaching a gathering
of all the participants, and the Bonner Foundation accorded me a
space at the end of dinner the first evening. And it was a good thing
it was at the end of dinner when there wasn't any food left to throw!
I explained that the Foundation had asked me to research the lessons
of the project and that I planned to do it in a participatory way, but I
didn't get very far. Very quickly, up shot one of the professors, asserting that this didn't seem We a very participatory approach to himthe research project and the researcher (me, who by that time was
trembling in my boots) had already been determined and, if this much
had already been decided, how could the rest possibly be participatory? He was followed by another professor, who said: "I now know
how community organizations feel-being required to participate in
research they had no hand in designing!"
It was a tough crowd, and it was very
clear I hadn't done my pre-research. The
best I could do was to say that I was only
there to offer the idea and plead that it
would certainly be participatory from
$:
here on out, including a research planning
Prescribe
meeting two days later, where they would
3,
determine what to research and how to
Implement .G3j':i:
'.<'i4'
use it. Well, they let me hold that meeting.
My most vocal critics, who are now
among my best friends, decided to give me a second chance and
attended the meeting. They not only made wonderful contributions
but took the lead in making the research useful through a book we
recently published (Community-Based Research and Higher Education,
f@FI%
,
pq
4
2003). Even though the project has ended, we are still worlung
together, advancing the cause of participatory forms of research. And
they taught me a valuable lesson about the importance of doing effective pre-research and maximizing participation from the beginning.
A PARTICIPATORY APPROACH T O
PROJECT-BASED RESEARCH
How does the participatory approach work in a typical example of
project-based research? It would be easy to say that there is no typical
example of project-based research. They are as diverse as the groups,
organizations, and communities that use them. They employ research
methods ranging from water and air testing to mapping to large-scale
surveys to in-depth interviews. And they engage academic disciplines
ranging from anthropology to zoology. They range widely in the
types and amount of participation they exhibit. They occur at different points in a project cycle, with some focused on diagnosing a situation, others prescribing solutions to a problem, others implementing
interventions, and yet others evaluating outcomes.
They all have in common, however, the fact that they are doing
research, whether it is surveying community attitudes, sampling air
or water for pollution, counting
abandoned houses, mapping crime
data, documenting public health
conditions, studying policy proChoosing the question
posals, or others. And in doing
Designing the methods
research, they all follow the steps in
Collecting the data
project-based research outlined in
Analyzing the data
Chapter 1. In the previous chapter,
however, we focused on how to do
each of these steps in terms of maximizing the accuracy of the research. Here we will focus on how to do
each step in terms of involving participants and maximizing the usefulness of the research.
,g
1. Choosing the Question
Once the researchers have a good sense of the local power
structure and issues, they can begin organizing a group to guide
the research. Because of the contexts in which I work, there is often
a predefined board or steering committee with whom I work
36
RESEARCH METHODS FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE
initially. My first meeting with that group outlines the possible
research questions, which at that point often are issues the group is
concerned about. I then take that list of ideas and check them with
people outside of this initial group. In my most recent work with
the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, for example, the local nonprofit community development corporation (called a CDC)5
invited me in to see if I could help design research to bridge some
of the cultural and political divisions in the neighborhood. One of
their research questions was concerned with how to overcome conflicts between residents of CDC-owned housing. As I talked with
other community members, however, it became clear that some
residents blamed the CDC itself for those conflicts. Since the CDC
was sponsoring the research, we began to realize that if I did
research on the housing conflict, I might worsen rather than
resolve the conflict. Instead we ended up choosing a research question that focused on studying the community organizing potential
across the neighborhood. In the last decade, Cedar-Riverside has
become a very diverse community of white, Korean, Vietnamese
and Hmong, Ethiopian, Oromo,6 and Somalian residents. We decided
to research the diversity of community organizations representing
these communities, and their interrelationships, to build a broadbased neighborhood coalition.
2. Designing the Methods
The next step was to design the research itself. In traditional
research, the main concern would be. what methods best served
scientific standards. Those standards are important and are the
contribution the researcher makes to the research process. From a
participatory project-based research perspective, however, it is also
important to design the research methods for maximum impact. In
this case, because the CDC was attempting to reach out and unify
the community, part of my job became not just interviewing neighborhood organization representatives but linking organizations
with each other. So one aspect of the research method involved
interviewing organization representatives to find out their organization's history, mission, current projects, and interorganizational
linkages. But a second aspect of the research involved encouraging
organization representatives to meet with each other. In each
interview I disclosed the purpose of the research and asked permission to provide the CDC with the organization's contact information. The research process itself helped to establish informal
The Goose Approach to Research 37
relationships called "weak tiesn7 between organizations in the
neighborhood. At the same time I was doing the research project, the
CDC was doing their own outreach. And while CDC staff were
already aware of many neighborhood organizations, my initial compilation of contact information for the 40-plus organizations helped
their efforts to organize two neighborhood events and recruit
participants across the community's ethnic groups.
3. Collecting the Data
Many proponents of participatory research prefer that community members be as involved as possible in every stage of the
research, including collecting the data. This is particularly the case
for the popular education model, which emphasizes that comrnunity members themselves should do the research to build their own
research skills and knowledge base.8 There are lots of situations
where that is impractical, however. Community or organization
members are often too busy to collect the data, and few grants provide enough money for people to take time off from regular jobs
or afford childcare so they can do research. The tight timelines that
often confront project-based research, along with the training
required for lay researchers to do the work, also don't mix very
well. In many cases, then, the researcher ends up carrying out the
research. But it is still very important to get as much participation as
possible. In the case of Cedar-Riverside, I was able to spend time
with a former Peace Corps volunteer with experience in East Africa.
She provided me with an initial introduction to the Somali,
Ethiopian, and Oromo communities. Among the things she taught
me was to visit the organizations in these communities personally
instead of calling to schedule an appointment. Doing so initially
doubled my anxiety about making that first contact, as I have
learned to start slowly and from a distance with most nonprofit
organizations so they don't feel belabored with yet another
researcher. But in each case, I walked into the office, introduced
myself, was met with exceeding warmth, and offered a seat and as
much time as I wanted right then and there. The first time I was
shocked. I figured I would shake hands, set a time for a future interview, and be on my way. I had to do the interview on the fly. It
actually helped, because this Somali man was so gentle and warm
that I immediately reconfigured what I was doing to seek his advice
on how to organize the research so that it would be useful to him as
well. And I did that with every subsequent interview.
38 RESEARCH METHODS FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE
4. Analyzing the Data
Similarly to collecting data, many proponents of participatory
research advocate the involvement of community or organization
folks in analyzing the data. If the people affected by the project are
involved in doing the analysis, they will receive educational and skill
benefits and also be more likely to use the research. There are many
ways to accomplish this. My preference, partly because most of my
project-based research is with community organizations, is to start
small. In research such as the Cedar-Riverside project, which is interview-based, I use the interview transcript validation process
described above, giving each person I interview a transcript (when I
am confident they are literate in written English) to review for accuracy. I also emphasize that the transcript is private untd they approve
it. I received comments from about a third of the people I interviewed,
made the changes they suggested, and sent every person interviewed
a rough draft. Again I asked each person to review it and add their
own comments agreeing or disagreeing with the analysis. While I was
doing this, I was also meeting with the CDC board each month, and
they accorded me space at each of four monthly meetings. At the first
meeting we organized an education session on different types of community organizing and then distributed a brief questionnaire asking
board members about the community organizing goals they thought
the CDC should pursue. At the next meeting I presented the results of
that brief questionnaire, showing that the board preferred a cooperative community-building approach across the ethnic communities
more than a confrontational approach of pitting the community
against some outside target like city hall. We discussed this in terms
of what types of community organizing CDCs may be best suited for.
At the third board meeting I presented the rough draft of the research
report. The discussions informed their own analysis of what the CDC
should do, and during this time the board supported two crosscultural, community-building events, both of which featured food
from each of the neighborhood's communities. I'd never before
attended a Somali-Ethiopian-Vietnamese-Korean-Anglo potluck.
5. Reporting the Results
As I've mentioned, reporting the results can occur in many
creative ways--community theater, quilting, street demonstrations,
oral storytelling, and who knows how many others. In this case the
reporting occurred in writing, with the research report going on the
Web. In addition, as the research progressed we also decided to
create a neighborhood directory with the contact information for all
The Goose Approach to Research 39
of the neighborhood organizations that gave their permission, and
we put that on the Web. It may seem odd that we would emphasize
Web-based reporting in a neighborhood of poor immigrant and
refugee communities. Indeed, at the beginning of the research the
CDC board and staff and I thought that was out of the question. But
here again, the advantages of community participation in the research
process made themselves known. It turns out that many members of
the Somali, Oromo, and Ethiopian communities were avid and skilled
Internet users, partly because it was the best way to keep in touch
with friends and family in their homelands and partly because of their
desire to succeed in their new home. Every organization representative used e-mail regularly and most even preferred receiving electronic copies of the research rather than paper copies. So we put it all
on the Web. In addition, the CDC continued its strategic planning
around its growing interest in supporting community-building in the
neighborhood, expanding its outreach for its annual meeting and
electing its first Somali board member in December of 2002.
BUILDING PARTICIPATORY
RELATIONSHIPS: THE RESEARCHER SIDE
This Goose Approach to research, as you may have surmised by now,
rests on relationships. If, like me, you have ever feared imposing
yourself on a community or organization, or felt like an interloper, it
may be because you haven't really developed any relationships with
the flock. Particularly, we professional researchers often feel caught
between thinking we know what's best for the community or not
contributing our own perspective for fear of being too influential.
Both responses, however, are symptomatic of not having built those
relationships and misunderstanding what collaboration and community-based expertise mean. I remember being brought up short a
few years ago while working with an African-American community
in Toledo. I was at a meeting, not contributing because I was stuck
in the "fear of undue influence" trap, when one of the neighborhood
leaders asked me directly what I thought. We'd worked together
for about a year by that time, and while I hemmed and hawed, Rose
Newton, in her wonderfully confrontational way, said: "Just tell us
what you thuds and don't worry about it-if it's a stupid idea we'll
tell you."
So, for those of us researchers with no community base, or
communities/organizations with no available researcher, how does
one build those relationships? The process has to begin by finding
40
RESEARCH METHODS FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE
each other. At the end of this chapter you will find a list of resources
that can help researchers and communities to find each other.
Researchers and communities trying to find each other face different kinds of challenges and opportunities. In many ways, it is easy
for researchers to find partners.
While researchers who want to
work collaboratively in community
Researcher Should Ask
and organization settings are still
relatively rare, communities and
Does the community/
organizations are everywhere. In
organization have the
urban areas, city governments often
capacity to participate?
maintain directories of area nonWhat resources can the
profits and community organizacornrnunity/organization
tions, as do university social work
departments. In rural areas, local
Does the community/
newspapers
often list meetings of
organization have
area groups, and county govemresearch needs you can
ments can sometimes be good
sources of contact information. The
challenge is finding the right organization or group to work with. Researchers not only need to find an
organization willing to accept help but one that has the capacity to
guide that help and use the end product of the research. How can a
researcher assess a potential community or organization partner
before investing time and resources that may only lead to failure?
Here are some questions to ask about the community/organization
side of the equation:
1. Does the Community/Organization
Have the Capacity to Participate?
If the research is going to actually be used, the community or
organization needs to have the capacity to use it. In some cases it
is possible to find out something about an organization's history
before even meeting them, including things like the stability of the
board and staff, its funding, and the kind of projects it has been
responsible for. This doesn't mean that small, unstable organizations, or disorganized communities, should be avoided altogether.
Indeed, a good participatory research project can help build and
stabilize a weak community or organization. But using research in
this way takes special skill and effort, and the researcher either
needs to have good community organizing skills or needs to be
The Goose Approach to Research 41
working with a skilled community organizer. It is also okay to take
a risk on a small project that may not lead to anything. There are
those out there who compare developing a collaborative research
relationship to dating. You can't know everything about your
potential partner before taking some risks, so make the risks small
at the beginning.
2. What Resources Can the
Community/Organization Contribute?
For those of us who do our community research on the side,
because our university values only research that produces journal
articles, it is often difficult to do this kind of research pro bono. As
the community-based research model becomes more popular, and
we develop a better understanding of how to engage students in
such research projects, the research resource gap is becoming less
problematic. But there are still resources that must come from the
community side. Depending on the project, they often need to
make time for interviews, open their files, read drafts, provide
office space and computer access for students, and even help with
training and supervising students on occasion. They may also need
to be responsible for organizing meetings around the research part
of the project. One of the most difficult challenges I have faced is
working with a community organization that is already going full
out. I become responsible for contacting all the relevant community people to encourage them to participate in the research planning, finding a place to meet, and making the reminder phone
calls. It is important to know at the beginning whether there are
staff resources or money available to support these research organizing tasks.
3. Does the Community/Organization
Have Research Needs You Can Fulfill?
The community/organization needs to come up with a research
question the researcher has some background in. I hesitate to think
what may have happened in Cedar-Riverside had I not understood
the thorny issues involved when CDCs try to move beyond their
usual mission of building housing to building community. Most
community organizations have a lot of expertise to begin with, and
42 RESEARCH METHODS FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE
they are looking for advanced information. Of course, there are
cases where the community or organization is entering uncharted
waters as well, in which case a researcher's methodological expertise may be more important than their substantive expertise. I
remember my second participatory research project in Toledo. The
community development coalition that formed out of our first project decided it wanted a study of how philanthropic foundations
give away money. At the time I didn't know what a foundation was,
much less how to study them. But then I found myself and an extraordinarily dedicated graduate student ruining our eyesight reading
microfiche tax records of Toledo-area foundations. For me personally it was the most tedious research I have ever been involved with,
but, for the community, it was the most popular and influential
research project I have ever contributed to.
BUILDING PARTICIPATORY
RELATIONSHIPS: THE COMMUNITY SIDE
Communities or organizations trying to fill a particular research
need not only have to develop their own understanding of what
they need but they also may need to really hunt to find a researcher
who can fill that need, as there are often no lists of available
researchers. Additionally, because
time and resources are tight, it is
Questions the Community/
important to find help that actually
Organization Should Ask
helps. There are still horror stories
out there of researchers who didn't
Is the researcher willing '
follow
through on a promised proto follow the community/
ject,
didn't
complete it in time to
organization's lead?
do
any
good,
or didn't do quality
How good is the
work.
And
if
you're
not a research
researcher at meeting
expert, it's difficult to judge someone who claims to be. It's also diffiCan the researcher comcult to demand a r6sum6 from
municate in a community
people who are essentially volunteering themselves and their
What experience does
students for your cause-though
the researcher have?
you still should. So, what are the
standards by which offers to help
should be judged? There are a set of questions community members
and workers, as well as academics themselves, can ask.
The Goose Approach to Research 43
Is the Researcher Willing to Follow
the Community/Organization's Lead?
Any community organization being approached by a researcher
should have a test ready. If you remember back to the beginning of
this chapter, the first time I approached a community organization
with my research question, as a graduate student, they instead
asked me to clean their storeroom. Trying to be a good citizen, I
accepted the task. I discovered that they were testing me not only to
see if I could truly collaborate with them but also to see how far I
would dig for the gold mine of data that their storeroom contained.
Have a casual meeting and discuss what kind of participation the
community will have throughout the research process. Discuss
whether the researcher plans to publish anything from the research
and whether you will have any input in their writing. Discuss who
owns the data. The "A" answer will be "the community/organization owns it." Some community groups have gone to writing up
contracts with their academic partners, which hold both the academic and the community accountable and are also helpful in planning the overall project.
How Good Is the Researcher
at Meeting Deadlines?
Community projects and academic projects are as different as
any two things called "projects" could be. Community projects
almost always have strict deadlines tied to absolute funding or legislative dates. Academic projects often have no deadlines except for
the faculty member who needs to have an article published before
the tenure decision deadline. Many of my academic friends chafe
at the implication that they can't meet a deadline, and of course
many of them are very responsible, but the academic environment is
very lax about deadlines, allowing students and faculty to treat
those deadlines more as suggestions. It is important to understand
that, in academia, it is almost always possible to turn a paper in late.
In the case of submitting articles to academic journals, there is no
deadline at all. But when a foundation says your funding proposal
must be in their hands by 5 p.m. on March 15, they mean it. It doesn't
matter if you suffered a heart attack on the way to the mailbox. When
I served on the review board for neighborhood grants made by the
City of Toledo, one of the proposals arrived at the city at 5:15 p.m. on
The Goose Approach to Research 45
44 RESEARCH METHODS FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE
the appointed day-15 minutes late. By city policy, we had to refuse
it. So make sure the researcher understands the project schedule. If
students are involved, and the project extends beyond the end of the
course, develop a plan for how the research will be completed after
the students are gone.
Can the Researcher Communicate
in a Community Context?
Remember that last article you read from a professional academic journal? Remember how much of it you understood?
Remember how many times you had to put it down before finally
finishing it (if you actually did finish it)? And don't think those
questions apply only to community people and students. When I
was a graduate student and a new assistant professor, I had some
wonderful community mentors who taught me how to write for
community audiences. It wasn't about "dumbing down" my writing but about making it interesting-shorter sentences, more common language, catchier phrasing, a more storybook tone, with
more real people. Academics and community members need to
discuss how they will report on the research and how collaborative
the process will be. Another way to assess how well a researcher
can communicate is for them to attend a community meeting and
find out whether everyone speaks the same language or at least
can translate.
What Experience ~ o e the
s Researcher Have?
It is not enough for a researcher to be good at collaborating,
meeting deadlines, and communicating. They ultimately also must
be able to do the work. Do they have expertise in the type of research
needed for your project? Do they have any past experience with similar projects? If they will be using students, what kind of training
and expertise will the students have?
Regardless of these questions, most important to communityacademic collaboration is the relationship. Project-based research is
time-consuming, unpredictable, and often politically messy The
relationship needs to stand up through all of that. If you are not sure
the relationship will be strong enough, then the research may not be
good enough.
LOOSE GRAVEL
The path to participatory research is pretty clear-the more participation the better. If the researcher engages community or organization members at every step of the research, the chances for success
are high. It's actually not hard to do. It just feels hard because, for
many of us, it requires working across class, race, and cultural
boundaries. But it is ultimately the relationships that matter, especially when you hit some of the loose gravel on the way to a successful participatory research project. There are three kinds of loose
gravel that are important to understand from the beginning: understanding who the "community" is; determining whether the situation you are researching is characterized by conflict or cooperation;
and dealing with charges of researcher bias.
1. Who Is the Community?
This patch of loose gravel may not apply as much to those working strictly in bureaucratically defined organizations. But those of
you in such situations may still confront concerns that the people
most affected by the research are not really involved in guiding it.
Especially if you are working with a service organization located in
a poor community, but not controlled by its residents, this section
can be particularly important.
It is interesting to me how reluctant people are to talk about the
question of who is the community. Some don't want to talk about it
because they fear that the conversation will be divisive. They would
prefer to think about us as all one big community, and to talk about
the community as separate from those of us trying to help will reinforce divisions and cause conflict. Another reason some don't want
to talk about it is because, at some level of consciousness, we "on the
outside" know that the community is not us. And that applies not
just to academics but to foundations, United Ways, government
agencies, and even most nonprofits. Because, by and large, those
organizations are not controlled by people who live, eat, and sleep
with the problems that participatory research models are designed
to attack. And that is where I begin in thinking about the community
in participatory research.
To me, "the community" is the people with the problem: The
economically disinvested neighborhood trying to get respectful and
effective police protection; the gay/lesbian community trying to get
fair marriage and adoption laws; the Latino or African-American
46 RESEARCH METHODS FOR COMMUNlTY CHANGE
Who Is the Community?
\
f
Funders
/
u
-
= Link Person
community trying to stop employment discrimination; the disabled
community trying to get better health care; or the rural community
trying to get clean drinking water. The community may be spatial or
may span spaces. It may be well organized or disorganized. In some
cases people may not even define themselves as a community-until
a good community organizer brings them together so they can discover their common issues and complementary resources. When
they do understand their issues and resources they sometimes form
their own community-based organizations (CB0s)-groups that
they as a community control, either by a majority hold on the board
of a formal organization or by their mass membership and participation in an informal group. In the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood
project described earlier, I found myself working with the neighborhood community development corporation (which is run by an
elected neighborhood board), the Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota, the Oromo Community of Minnesota, the Korean
Service Center, and an informal Vietnamese group, among the many
other non-community-based nonprofit organizations.
A step removed from the cosmmmity are those organizations that
are not controlled by the community but are connected to it by staff or
board members who come from the community. Those "link people,"
or "bridge people," or "translators," as they are variously called, are
special. In multicultural situations they are the people who not only
The Goose Approach to Research 47
speak multiple languages but also understand the rules of multiple
cultures. In Cedar-Riverside I worked with a Vietnamese community
leader, a Somali community leader, a leader in the Oromo community,
and a leader of the local Korean community. All were members of
their respective ethnic communities, and were also running formal
community-based service organizations in the neighborhood.
Two steps removed are those organizations with no direct connection to the people with the problem. Their staff or boards may
share some structural characteristics--of class, race, gender, sexual
orientation, disability, or other important characteristic-but they do
not share the experience of the problem. Service providers, institutions, government, and other similar organizations trying to help a
community-when they have no community base, no community
participation or control, and no bridge people-are often suspect in a
community. And yet it is with these twice-removed groups that so
many academics partner-something I call working from the middle.
This situation confronts us with a number of questions. First,
what does a researcher do in a divided community when there are
divisive CBOs? This can often seem like the most difficult situation
to deal with. But it may not actually be as difficult as it seems. For
researchers often occupy a special status in community settings.
Similar to newspaper reporters, many people see researchers as
people who can help them tell their story. In my many years of
working with the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, perhaps one of
the most contentious (though thankfully still nonviolent) neighborhoods in the country, I have learned a number of lessons in working
with divisive neighborhood factions.
The most important lesson is that, if you don't take sides, you
have to keep secrets. In the many neighborhood disputes I have witnessed over the years, I have more than once been told of the strategy one side planned to get the other side. I've kept that information
secret, following my basic code that I don't distribute anyone's
information before they have had a chance to review and revise it.
Consequently, they had to work out the disputes themselves. And
they were much better at it than I would have been.
The second lesson is that there are situations where your own
values compel you to choose sides. I have just finished yet another
research project with the CDC in Cedar-Riverside, looking at the
strategies they have used to successfully create over 250 units of
housing in the neighborhood. I agreed to the project after two years
spent avoiding the housing conflicts in the neighborhood. But I eventually came to see those opposing the CDC as such a grave threat
to the neighborhood housing that I felt compelled to give up my
48
RESEARCH METHODS FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE
neutrality. That doesn't mean I don't still keep secrets, particularly
because those opposing the CDC are community residents rather
than outside actors. But my research is focused on helping the CDC
reorganize the affordable cooperative housing they created rather
than helping its opponents find a way to transform it into
privately owned houses that they could buy low and sell high.
A more challenging situation than an organized, but divided,
community is one that is disorganized, where there are no CBOs
with any effective capacity. In some cases the researcher gets
approached by a service organization working in such a community.
The organization itself serves people in the community but has no
community members who participate in the organization's programmatic or governance decisions. Think, for example, of homeless service organizations. Partly because of the level of deprivation
of homeless individuals, and partly because of the level of mental illness such a situation can exacerbate or cause, it seems unimaginable
to do participatory research with homeless individuals guiding the
research. Yet that is exactly what happened with Project South's
work in Atlanta in preparation for the 1996 Olympics, as the city
demolished public housing near downtown and tried to sweep the
homeless off the street^.^ Ian Landry has also been conducting participatory research with homeless individuals in Canada toward
building participation of the homeless in program development.1°
These are admittedly rare situations. But they provide lessons for
how a researcher and a service organization can work together to
increase the participation of people normally thought of as only
recipients of those services.
Thinking of ways that the community (defined, remember, as
"the people with the problem") can be involved in the research also
provides an important test of a service organization. Some service
organizations have such a long history of not engaging recipient participation in program design and implementation that they cannot
imagine how to do it. If you are a researcher approached by a service
organization, you can propose a method that involves recipients in
decision making about the research, and then suggest how such participation can continue when the research actually gets put to use. If
you are experienced in such a process yourself, you may even help a
traditional service organization make the transition from simple service provision to building the sense of power and efficacy in those
people it formerly thought of only as recipients. This becomes even
more important if you are approached by a foundation to evaluate a
program. My experience with the Bonner Foundation, described earlier, taught me that a research project appearing to be imposed from
The Goose Approach to Research 49
the "outside" will become little more than shelf research. In the case
of the Bonner Foundation, it wasn't even being imposed, but the fact
that even the idea for the research came from outside the program
participants was immediately suspect.
The most important lesson in working from the middle, or with
a disorganized community, is to do it with a skilled organizer. We
researchers particularly-for some reason-see the research we do
as extremely complex and requiring extensive training to carry out.
But we don't see the skills involved in organizing a group, running
a meeting, and managing the flow of interpersonal relations in moving from research to action as also requiring extensive training and
a high level of expertise. One of my embarrassing failures in participatory research came while working with a Hispanic community in
Chicago, who had experienced some successes in getting their local
schools to be more culturally sensitive and supportive of parent
involvement. The organization sponsoring the effort wanted to document their work and its outcomes so they could apply for grants to
expand the project. My colleague and I agreed to do the research but
wanted the parents to do the interviews-neither of us were fluent
in Spanish or experienced in Hispanic culture and hoped that
involving parents would assure that the research truly reflected the
community's experience. What we didn't know, however, was how
much organizing was involved in making this happen. We had
funds to pay the parent interviewers, but our first meeting with
them recruited only a few parents. We had a difficult time explaining the purpose of the project and how to do it and didn't realize
how important it would be for us to keep the project moving by calling subsequent meetings, checking in regularly with the parent
interviewers, and expanding the circle of parent participants. Ever
since then I have realized the benefit of working with a skilled community organizer who could do those things.
2. Is the Situation Characterized
By Conflict or Cooperation?
As we will see beginning in the next chapter, project-based
research can occur across an incredibly wide range of issues. But one
of the most important ways that such research can vary is across situations of conflict or cooperation. At one extreme is an organization
that is organizing its membership to attack a target-a bad-guy corporation or government that has excluded or damaged the community in some way. At the other extreme is a unified organization or
50 RESEARCH METHODS FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE
community developing a new, noncontroversial program to serve its
own members. These two types of projects come from two very
different worldviews and illustrate the distinction between what
sociologists call functionalist theory and conflict theory.
Functionalist theory argues that healthy societies tend toward
natural balance and naturally sort people into jobs and positions
according to their individual talents and societal needs. This theory
also assumes that people have common interests even when they
have different positions in society. Healthy, persistent societies
change gradually rather than abruptly. Thus, a group organizing to
force change can throw off equilibrium, and cooperation to produce
gradual change is a better alternative." In contrast, conflict theory
sees no natural tendency toward anything but conflict over scarce
resources. In this model, society develops through struggle between
groups. Imbalance is the normal state of affairs. A false equilibrium
is only achieved temporarily, through one group dominating the
other groups. Conflict theory sees society as divided, particularly
between corporations and workers, men and women, and whites
and people of color. The instability inherent in such divided societies
prevents elites from achieving absolute domination and provides
opportunities for those on the bottom to create change through organizing for collective action and conflict.12
Different types of organizations often tend toward one of the
two models. The community work industry, for example, can be
divided into the practices of advocacy, service delivery, community
development, and community organizing. Advocacy-the practice
of trying to create social change on behalf of others (such as children
or trees or illegal immigrants who are unable to advocate for themselves)-and sewice delivery-what we normally think of as social
services-both tend to occur through midrange, non-communitybased organizations. Community development-providing housing, business, and workforce development-and
community
organizing-building powerful self-advocacy organizations-are
more likely to occur through true community-based organizations.
Advocacy and community organizing are based more on conflict
theory, while service delivery and community development are
based more on functionalist theory.
The question becomes how to use participatory forms of
research with each situation. Historically, the practices of participatory research and popular education have been seen as more consistent with conflict theory, and action research has been seen as more
consistent with functionalist theory.13
Participatory research and popular education were influenced by
the Third World development movement of the 1960s. Academics,
The Goose Approach to Research 51
activists, and indigenous community members collaborated to
conduct research, develop education programs, and create plans to
counter global corporations attempting to take over world agriculture. Their research, education, and planning processes led to sustainable, community-controlled agricultural and development projects.
The "participatory research and "popular education" models resulting from this movement across India, Africa, and South America have
been the leading models around much of the world.14These models
also emphasize people producing knowledge to develop their own
consciousness as a means for furthering their struggles for social
change." Consequently, the highest form of participatory research is
that which is completely controlled and conducted by the community.
It is interesting in this regard that the most well-known practitioners
of this model, such as the Highlander Research and Education Center,
the Applied Research Center, and Project South, are all organizations
outside of academia.
The origin of action research is most associated with Kurt Lewin.16
He and his colleagues focused on attempting to resolve interracial
conflicts, along with conducting applied research to increase worker
productivity and satisfaction. Action research emphasizes the integration of theory and practice and does not challenge the existing power
relationships in either knowledge production or material production.
It has been used in education settings and in union-management collaboration in research to save jobs and improve worker satisfaction.17
Action research values useful knowledge, developmental change, the
centrality of individuals, and consensus social theories. The point of
reference for action researchers is the profession more than the community, and the practice is very similar to the models used by professional planners. The action research model emphasizes collaboration
between groups and does not address the structural antagonism
between those groups emphasized by the participatory research
model. Action research instead seeks to resolve conflicts between
groups, reflecting the basic worldview of functionalist theory.
It is important for the researcher and the community/organization to understand this distinction. In Cedar-fiverside, the survey
we did with the CDC board showed clearly that they disliked conflict and wanted to work from a more functionalist world view.
There were many issues they could have taken on by using a conflict
approach. For example, the city had suspended a major source of
funding for redevelopment in the neighborhood, leaving CedarRiverside the only neighborhood in the city not receiving such
funds. But CDC board members wanted to emphasize strategies for
bringing the community together around working for something
rather than working against something, perhaps because they had
52 RESEARCH METHODS FOR CO-
CHANGE
become worn out by all the conflict over two decades of rebuilding
and defending their community.
If the researcher works from a worldview that reflects functionalist theory, and the community worldview reflects the opposite,
and they don't talk about it, each side could actually be working
toward a different kind of outcome. And they may not realize it until
it's too late. I was, in fact, used to Cedar-Riverside being a roughand-tumble, confrontational neighborhood always up for a fight.
But I did not realize how heavy a toll the neighborhood's internal
conflict had taken, since I now lived 700 miles away and maintained
my involvement through monthly site visits. I was all ready to provide research support so that they could organize a big confrontational campaign. Thankfully, we talked about this very issue, which
led to research supporting a community-building strategy rather
than a community organizing strategy.
3. Is the Participatory Approach Biased?
Doing research in a way that involves community or organization members often invites charges of bias. How accurate can
research be, after all, if non-experts direct it? How accurate can it be
if a researcher with a commitment to support a particular community or organization does it?
This particular patch of loose gravel will carry different risks for
communities compared to researchers. Communities and organizations need to worry if foundations, judges, legislators, and community members will take their research seriously. These audiences
assume that the researchdis conducted with some degree of onesidedness. Their main question is whether the research is accurate.
And while being armed with research that looks objective can sometimes help win a policy issue, more important is having research
that can survive the criticisms of the opposition.
For university- or college-based researchers, however, the
appearance of objectivity can be as important as the degree of accuracy. We saw in Chapter 1 that there is no necessary relationship
between objectivity and accuracy and that the distinction between
the two has been lost. But when it comes to getting tenure, if the academic's research appears too passionate, it doesn't matter how accurate it might be. It is still labeled and discarded as biased.
In addition, project-based research doesn't fit cleanly into higher
education. When I got my first professor job, it was split half and
half between a regular department and a university-based applied
research center. I used this position to do participatory research with
The Goose Approach to Research 53
community organizations. After the third year, however, I had to
give up my work through the research center. Half of the department faculty didn't like it because they thought I was supposed to
be doing research and interpreted my work as service projects. The
other half thought just the opposite. In addition, much of this kind
of research is descriptive and involves counting things. It is often
much easier to get community permission to publish their data than
it is to get an academic journal to accept an article based on such
descriptive data. Some academic journals are becoming more interested in publishing articles on how to do participatory forms of
research, but we still have a ways to go in gaining legitimacy for
participatory forms of research.
So the first challenge for academic researchers involves explaining what they are doing. That is becoming easier thanks to the growing popularity of service learning and community-based research
in higher education.'' But even when faculty review committees
understand it, they may not respect it. That is because so much of
this kind of research disregards the reified version of objectivity that
demands the researcher remain dispassionate and distanced, and
that the research remain in the control of professionals at all times.
What are the defenses against this? First, as we have already discussed, is the critique of objectivity itself and returning objectivity to
its status as a strategy rather than a goal in itself. More difficult to
deal with is the charge of the researcher "going nativeu-becoming
overidentified with the community's values. But here, too, it is
important to sepqrate commitment to a community from commitment to a particular research outcome. Just as objectivity and accuracy are not the same, neither are going native and researcher bias.
The question is not the extent to which the researcher identifies with
the community but how skilled they are at conducting research that
can accurately reflect reality. Of course, researchers helping an organization evaluate a program need to check their desire to make the
organization look good. But it is no less difficult for experimental
researchers to check their desire to confirm their own hypothesis.
The final issue the academic researcher has to deal with is the
charge that unskilled community members are making too many
decisions about the research and therefore threatening its accuracy.
On the face of it, this seems difficult to defend against. But Phil Nyden
and colleague^'^ have shown that the combination of the abstract
knowledge of academics and the experiential knowledge of community members is more powerful than each alone. The most powerful
illustration of this point comes from a deadly disease that shuck the
Navajo community in 1993. When the Centers for Disease Control
tried to investigate what was killing members of the Navajo Nation
54
The Goose Approach to Research 55
RESEARCH METHODS FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE
in New Mexico, they went in without understanding the cultural
norms of mourning the dead and community privacy standards. As a
consequence, the people they interviewed told them anything just to
get them out of the way, and the CDC ended up, unknowingly, with
useless data. In the interim, more people died. Eventually, a Navajo
public health researcher, consulting with a local Navajo medicine man,
helped manage the cultural differences, and they discovered the killer
was the mouse-borne hantavirus. It appears, however, that this virus
had already been diagnosed through Navajo "myth," which told of
the relationship between excess rainfall and growth in the mouse population and the bad luck one would receive if a mouse ran across your
clothing." The Centers for Disease Control now cites the knowledge
of traditional Navajo healers in its information on hantavirus21 and
has established community advisory committees around the country
to link community-based knowledge with scientific kn~wledge.~'
Lives were lost by ignoring community knowledge, and were saved
by treating that knowledge as legitimate.
When project-based research involves a collaboration between
professional researchers and community groups or organizations,
the two parties need to ask some questions of each other. Researchers
should ask:
Does the community/organization have the capacity to participate?
What resources can the community/organization contribute?
Does the community/organization have research needs you can fulfill?
Community groups or organizations should ask:
Is the researcher willing to follow the community/organization's lead?
How good is the researcher at meeting deadlines?
Can the researcher communicate in a community context?
What experience does the researcher have?
Finally, there are some potentially tricky issues that researchers
and organizations need to face in project-based research:
CONCLUSION
This chapter has focused on the process of doing project-based
research with community members and organizations, emphasizing
how to increase the participation of community and organization
members in the research. It is important to remember, however, that
this is not participation for participation's sake. The next chapter
will focus on the project-based research model and will show how
participation fits into that model. The purpose of participation in a
research context is to support the project work of the organization.
So, remember that participatory forms of research:
Focus on being useful
Employ diverse research methods
Emphasize collaboration
Community and organization members can participate in,
contribute to, and guide every step of the research process, including:
Choosing the research question
Designing the research methods
Collecting the data
Analyzing the data
Reporting the results
Who is the community? Is the organization or group sponsoring the
research representative of the community or connected to it?
Is the situation characterized by conflict or cooperation? Do the partners in the project agree on the characterization of the situation and
the strategies to use in that context?
Is participatory research biased? Will it be taken seriously in policy
and legal contexts?
RESOURCES
Community-Based Research
Networks Based in Higher Education
Community-Campus Partnerships for Health, http://www.ccph.info
Coral network, http:/ /www.coralnetwork.org/
Just Connections, http://www.justconnections.org
Neighborhood Planning for Community Revitalization, http://www.cura.
urnn.edu/programs/npcr.html
Policy Research Action Group, http:/ /www.luc.edu/curl/prag/
University Community Collaborative of Philadelphia, http://www.
temple.edu/uccp
56 RESEARCH METHODS FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE
Popular Education Centers
Based in Higher Education
Center for Popular Education and Participatory Research, University of
California Berkeley, http:/ /cpepr.net/
Centre for Popular Education, University of Technology Sydney, http://
www.cpe.uts.edu.au
Popular Education and Participatory Research
Centers Outside of Higher Education
Applied Research Center, http://www.arc.org/
Highlander Research and Education Center, http:/ /www.highlandercenter
.erg/
Paulo Freire Institute, http: / /www.paulofreue.org/
Participatory Research in Asia, http:/ /www.pria.org
Project South, http: / /www.projectsouth.org/
Books and Edited Collections
Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, special issue on communitybased research, Vol. 9(3), 2003.
Nyden, P., Figert, A., Shibley, M., & Burrows, D. (1997). Building community:
Social science in action. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
Park, P., M. Brydon-Mier, B. Hall, & T. Jackson (Eds.). Voices of change:
Participatory research in the United States and Canada. Westport, CT:
Bergin and Garvey.
Strand, K., Marullo, S., Cutforth, N., Stoecker, R., & Donohue, P. (2003).
Community-based research and higher education. San-Francisco:Jossey-Bass.
Stringer, E. T. (1999). Action research: A handbook for practitioners (2nd Ed.).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Wallerstein, N., & M. Minkler (Eds.). (2002). Community-based participatory
research in health. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
How-To Guides
Ritas, C. (2002). Speaking truth, creating power: A guide to policy work for
community-based participatory research practitioners. CommunityCampus Partnerships for Health, http:/ /depts.washington.edu/ccph/
pdf-files /ritas.pdf
Stoecker, R. (2003). The CBR FAQ. The Bonner Foundation, http://www.
bonner.org/campus/crp/ faq.tml?keyword=&s=l
The Goose Approach to Research 57
1. Stoecker, R. (1994). D@ending community: The struggle for alternative
redevelopment in Cedar-Riverside. (p. 25). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
2. Shnchez, M. E., & Almeida, E. (1992).Synergistic development and
participatory action research in a Nahuat community. The American
Sociologist, 23, 83-99.
3. Lynd, M. (1992). Creating knowledge through theatre. The
American Sociologist, 23, 100-115.
4. Escarra, C. (2002). Participatory research. Presentation at the
University of Toledo, August 28.
5. In the United States, community development corporations are
nonprofit organizations that focus on rehabilitating or building housing and
developing small-scale local economies.
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58 RESEARCH METHODS FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE
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